Blog

07/12/18

The summer of my tenth year I learned to jump. It wasn’t Molly who taught me to jump. Her pet ram did. That was during a week spent with my friend Molly on her family’s home near the hill country of Texas. Charlie held court beneath the blue shade of a live oak, in the front yard of the Molesworth’s… Read More

03/04/18

I can hardly remember my father being at home during my youth- except for Christmas. And hurricanes. One image remains in my mind: the night one hurricane descended upon our south Texas city of Corpus Christi. Was it Beulah or Cecelia? I can’t remember the name of the hurricane nor which of my five siblings were present that night. I… Read More

11/21/17

We were heading into a tornado. Of course, we didn’t know that. Our daughter Susannah was returning for her last year at college in Grand Rapids. But a late summer thunderstorm hit us en route. Soon, it developed into a blinding deluge. White-knuckled, I pulled into the dorm parking lot. As we headed for the dorm’s entrance, sirens went off…. Read More

09/22/16

My mother was never happier than right after she’d had her hair done. Done as in testing the center of a baked layer cake. Done as in having her hair washed, rolled, heated, styled, then secured with a shellacking of AquaNet. She told me once that her most innovative ideas came to her while sitting under the celadon dome… Read More

03/02/16

I have been in Michigan for almost twenty years now and I still can’t get used to it. Not the Michigan winters, but the Michigan summers. By mid July the wild flowers along the highway, the carnelian dahlias in our yard, the emerald lawns and shiny lake down the road all serve to fill my sense with an abundance of… Read More

01/29/16

Last night it was eight degrees below. How do the chickadees keep warm? I know how the blue jays do. A friend told me he places peanuts in their shells on his deck for the squirrels. But an uninvited blue jay soon landed, lifting and shaking at least twelve shells before selecting the heaviest one with peanuts loaded in both… Read More